What You're Feeling Is Weltschmerz

Our around-the-clock overexposure to global human suffering, our daily feed of what we once considered catastrophic events — political, ecological, cultural — when combined with diminished attention spans, smaller and smaller chunks of content, and baked-in cross-platform imperatives to remain emotionally removed from any given person, place, or ev... See more

The sense is that in the fairly recent past there were social narratives that were both fulfilling and rewarding to participate in, but that for our generation and seemingly subsequent generations to come, it is becoming harder and harder to find and buy into a compelling shared telos. This is the sense of meaninglessness that prompts some people i... See more

It can be dizzying when you think about the size of the universe compared to yourself. Or the fact that everything that keeps you alive hangs in perfect balance, based on our planet’s position. Perhaps you look at the stars at night and feel like you are being sucked toward them. Like you are being consumed by the expanse around you. [That feeling:... See more

Absorbed in comfort, we are restless. Drowning in excess, we are hollow. The statistics confirm what our souls already know: despair has metastasized, anxiety has become our natural state, and in the absence of real suffering, we have made a spectacle of our own discontent.